Talotta R, Robertson E. Autoimmunity as the comet tail of COVID-19 pandemic. World J Clin Cases 2020; 8(17): 3621-3644 [PMID: 32953841 DOI: 10.12998/wjcc.v8.i17.3621]
Corresponding Author of This Article
Rossella Talotta, MD, PhD, Senior Researcher, Department of Clinical and Experimental Medicine, Rheumatology Unit, AOU “Gaetano Martino”, University of Messina, via Consolare Valeria 1, Messina 98100, Italy. talotta1@virgilio.it
Research Domain of This Article
Medicine, Research & Experimental
Article-Type of This Article
Review
Open-Access Policy of This Article
This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
World J Clin Cases. Sep 6, 2020; 8(17): 3621-3644 Published online Sep 6, 2020. doi: 10.12998/wjcc.v8.i17.3621
Autoimmunity as the comet tail of COVID-19 pandemic
Rossella Talotta, Erle Robertson
Rossella Talotta, Department of Clinical and Experimental Medicine, Rheumatology Unit, AOU “Gaetano Martino”, University of Messina, Messina 98100, Italy
Erle Robertson, Department of Otorhinolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19014, United States
Author contributions: Talotta R conceived the idea for the manuscript, reviewed the literature and drafted the manuscript; Robertson E critically revised the paper; all the authors approved the final version of the manuscript.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The author declares no conflict of interests.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Rossella Talotta, MD, PhD, Senior Researcher, Department of Clinical and Experimental Medicine, Rheumatology Unit, AOU “Gaetano Martino”, University of Messina, via Consolare Valeria 1, Messina 98100, Italy. talotta1@virgilio.it
Received: July 4, 2020 Peer-review started: July 4, 2020 First decision: July 24, 2020 Revised: July 29, 2020 Accepted: August 26, 2020 Article in press: August 26, 2020 Published online: September 6, 2020
Core Tip
Core tip: The immune system plays a central role in coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), being responsible for clinical manifestations and prognosis. Hyper-activation of the immune response against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 may result, in some cases, in development of unwanted autoimmune disorders. COVID-19 has been associated with immune-mediated systemic or organ-selective manifestations, some of which fulfill the diagnostic or classification criteria of specific autoimmune diseases. Though it is still unknown whether these medical conditions represent transitory post-infectious epiphenomena, the use of therapeutic agents targeting the immune system may perhaps prevent their chronicization which leads to development of autoimmune diseases.
